I am not sure where I first came across this book, I think it was on Hoopla, but all I knew was that I loved the title and book cover! I was really anxious to read another book that’s set in New York. After reading this I feel like I always have to be reading a book that’s set in New York. This book has quickly been added to my Goodreads favorites shelf. It was such a fun read! Now I really want to read some of the other books in the I Heart book series!
I made a I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk Spotify playlist for this book because there were bands mentioned and I listened to it all the time! I love The Stills now! I also love that the author and Angela both love indie rock bands! :P <3
“The New York City skyline. Manhattan. The Empire State Building. The beautiful, beautiful Chrysler Building. The Woolworth Building with its big old churchy steeple. And I fell in love. It hit me so hard that I stopped crying, stopped thinking, stopped breathing. I felt as if I’d been winded. Winding the cab window all the way down, I breathed in the skyscrapers, the giant billboards, the industrial riverside stretches and the sweaty, steamy air. I was in New York.” (31)
“and you came to the best city in the world to rediscover yourself.” (44)
“Don’t get up,’ she said, opening the door. ‘Just enjoy the food, watch some shitty TV and get ready for tomorrow.’
‘What’s tomorrow?’ I asked, cracking into the pancakes. I was so hungry and everything was so good.
Jenny grinned from the doorway. ‘Lots of things. It’s my day off, it’s the day I’m taking you out so you don’t spend a second longer than necessary alone watching cable, and it’s the first day of your New York adventure. Be up and in reception by nine-thirty.’
And she was gone.” (45)
“as a knock at the door shook me out of my wow-I’m-really-in-New-York-and-let’s-not-think-about-why trance.” (48)
⁃ Lolz
“p.s. hope you enjoyed Joe too, I bet your ex didn’t bring you pancakes in the morning looking like that…
I laughed out loud, but it sounded so strange.” (50)
⁃ Lolz hehe! 
“You’re in New York, it’s like, the best place on earth to be a writer. There are a million books inspired by Manhattan.” (55)
⁃ That is SO true! 
“Angela Clark, by the end of today, I’ll have made a New Yorker out of you.” (66)
“Looking right, I swam in the endless downtown view afforded by the New York grid system, channels framed by skyscrapers rising high into the sky.” (71)
“She wasn’t wrong, the Flatiron building was incredible, all triangular and pointy but everything we passed was cool. Gorgeous, organized, New Yorky and cool.” (74)
“But she’s here to look after everyone. New York is made up of millions of different people, Angie, and they all come here looking for something, just like you.” (75)
⁃ Lady Liberty.
“And New York is a great place to do that. It’s a city of new beginnings. People go to LA to “find themselves”, they come to New York to become someone new.” (76)
“I took one last look out at the statue. Wowsers. I was in New York.” (78)
⁃ 
“Hmm, a new friend, a new wardrobe and a new city. Compared to Saturday, this hadn’t been a bad day.” (78)
“sipping my bucket of coffee” (85)
“Even though I’d never been here, the streets seemed so familiar. Either I’d found my spiritual home or I’d watched too much TV.”(95)
“I was back to dreaming my New York life, instead of living my New York dream.” (102)
“Thankfully, this time she didn’t just laugh and proved herself to be not just a great life coach but a great hair-holder-backer and glasses of water provider. Once she’d stripped me down and helped me into the shower, I began to feel slightly more human. This was definitely a crash course in friendship.” (121)
⁃ I love this friendship of Jenny’s and Angela’s! It’s so sweet! 
“Pulling out my notebook and hotel room pen, I started to scribble my thoughts. God, imagine writing an online diary for The Look magazine!” (133)
⁃ I like that Angela is writing in her notebook in a café! So cute!
“but I needed to find some way of celebrating my job, my New York minute.” (183)
“New York is so amazing. It makes me feel like…like I’m really living, you know? It makes me want to do new things and just discover every inch of it. See everything there is to see.” (189)
“There’s nothing worse than staying when there’s nothing to stay for.” (195)
“You want to walk the last couple of blocks?’ Tyler asked, reading my mind. I nodded eagerly and jumped out onto the pavement, leaning against the wall and looking out across the lake. It was like a scene from a movie. My movie.” (215)
“I’d really like to write. Just write, whether it’s magazines or books, whatever. Not necessarily deep and meaningful, but just something that someone can enjoy. Something that they can sit down with for an hour to enjoy, and escape from, I don’t know, whatever it is they need to escape from.” (230)
⁃ I love that, Angela! 
“What you saw on the surface, what was right in your face every day, that was only a third of it, the rest was up in the sky.” (251)
“It made this whole New York adventure real.” (253)
“We stood and looked out over the city. The sun was long gone from the sky and a blanket of reassuring darkness had been tucked over New York, with the newly lit Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building acting like giant nightlights, keeping everyone safe. It looked so completely different, this magical island out there on its own, defiantly sparkling away.” (261)
“thinking about how different the views were out of our windows. I could see yellow taxi cabs, the Chrysler Building and thousands of New Yorkers hustling and bustling around the city.” (319)
“It was just like Jenny had said, New York wasn’t somewhere you came to find yourself again, it was somewhere you came to become something, someone, new.” (345)
“In a Starbucks with wireless internet I logged on. My blog was short and to the point. The Adventures of Angela: Moving On From Moving On. Yes, I had a lot of crap to wallow in, and I could feel sorry for myself for the next five years if I wanted, but I also had a lot to be glad about and from here on in, that was what this diary was going to be about.” (345-346)
“he yawned again. He really was too cute.
‘I’ll see you there.’ I yawned a little myself. It was even contagious on the phone.” (360)
⁃ I yawned too lolz
“I could understand why Alex loved Williamsburg, it was so chilled out, but I was still in love with Manhattan, despite the maddening crowds. The noise, the people, the feeling that anything could happen at any given second. That was what inflated my blood pressure, that was what sent adrenaline surging through me as the streets got narrower, more congested. I loved the neon billboards, the giant Target ads, the garish Hershey store, Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Co, Virgin, Sephora, Toysus. They were just adverts, stores, restaurants, but it was the clicking cameras and the pushing people with the happiest faces you’d ever seen that made the place what it was. And it was amazing to me.” (379)
“People love you, Angela, and they love to live vicariously through someone else. They don’t want to run away to another continent and leave everything they’ve ever known, but they love that you’re doing it for them,” (380)
“I had just worked out I was happy, I had just worked out it was definitely Alex, not Tyler, and now this. Jenny would say it was life testing my decisions. My mum would tell me it was fate bringing me home. I would say, enough, have we got any more Ring Dings. And since I was the only person in the room, I went with my option.” (383-384)
“I hung up and put my phone in my bag, taking out The Look. I opened it on my page and looked at the intro.
The Adventures of Angela. Twenty-something ex-Londoner, Angela Clark, guides us through life and love, finding friends and finding her way in the Big Apple.
It wasn’t a very complete description, I thought, but at least it was somewhere to start.” (425)
Excerpts From: Lindsey K. Kelk. “I Heart New York.” HarperCollins, 2010. Apple Books.
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What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
